REALITY TV

Chip and Kim McAllister: An 'Amazing Race' to a Happy Marriage

By Cheryl Wilcox and Scott RossThe 700 Club

CBN.com
 Meet the McAllister’s. He’s Chip. She’s Kim. They have an amazing love story filled with romance, adventure, and commitment. They met at a dance. For Chip it was love at first sight. Kim, however, ran the other direction.

“She proceeded to go out on the dance floor for 45 minutes,” Chip recalls. “I stood there, because her purse was there [so] I knew she had to come back.”

Although it took a while, Chip eventually won her heart.

“It’s going on 20 years that we’ve been married,” says Kim. “He’s been a blessing for me."

By 2003 Chip and Kim are owners and partners in a successful information technology company. Suddenly their multi-million dollar business was taken over, they were ousted, and all their hard work went down the drain.

Do you think they became pool sharks? Did they run away from home? Or did they audition for a reality based TV show to try to win a million dollars?

You guessed it.

“Chip and I had started dwelling in the misery,” recalls Kim. “We had sunk so low in this valley. We started praying, and one day he came home and said, ‘Kim, I have this fabulous idea. Why don’t we go on this game show called The Amazing Race?’

Chip says, “I told Kim, ‘We’re going to get on this show, ‘cause this is a God thing.’ This is something so out of the ordinary, so not what we’re supposed to do. This would only be God. He showed me that ‘You are going to get on The Amazing Race, and you’re going to get favor in your life. You and Kim are going to be able to be advocates for happy, healthy marriages.’

“This time [The Race] was 75,000 miles that we had to travel. We went from Argentina to Uruguay, Russia, Egypt, Africa, Dubai, Manila, the Philippines, and all the way to Canada.”

The one thing the McAllisters needed was a strategy to win the game.

“I was going to do all of the physical tasks, and that was by design because we pretty much knew there were going to be eating tasks. Kim is a sharp thinker. She’s a UCLA grad, so we needed her to keep her mind fresh.”

Kim spent time analyzing the competition. “Everybody was 20 years younger than us. But we were just looking for the opportunity. This was the real honeymoon that I never did have.”

In the season's final episode, Chip and Kim were in their usual position -- last place. But that enabled them to get some critical flight information that catapulted them ahead of all the competition!

“The information [was] that a crucial flight was delayed,” says Chip. “So that just showed us that we have to prosper where we’re planted. We wanted to be in first place, but we would have lost that race if we were. We wouldn’t have gotten that information. God is so good. We have to remain where we are and have the faith during those rough times.”

They hit the ground in Dallas in first place --– just minutes away from the finish line.

In that moment, God gave them inspiration. “He just says that we can never quit, never quit,” Chip recalls. “A strong marriage is with God prioritized as No. 1. We prioritize at No. 2, and our kids are No. 3. That kind of a marriage can’t fail if we prioritize that way. I think some marriages are prioritized where people love their kids more than they love their spouse. But Kim wants the highest for me, and I want the absolute highest for her.”

Kim concurs, “He’s the best thing in my life.”

“The Lord showed us that, working together like that, we’ll never be losers,” says Chip. “We didn’t have to win the million dollars but Kim and I were winners before we won... But the million dollars ain’t bad.”